He concludes: "So if the elections go as expected next week, here’s my advice: Be afraid. Be very afraid."

Hey, wait, I thought it was Democrats who liked to say Republicans are trying to scare us. Now, it's just Republicans are scary, and we hope you believe that they're scary to everyone, and not just to Democrats.

Now, the government shutdown ended up hurting Republicans politically, and some observers seem to assume that memories of that experience will deter the G.O.P. from being too confrontational this time around. But the lesson current Republicans seem to have drawn from 1995 isn’t that they were too confrontational, it’s that they weren’t confrontational enough.

Well, he's wrong on the first point and the second just sounds like the flipside of the argument that the stimulus was big enough. Fail.

Does this mean that college professors and columnists like Paul Krugman will now begin to appreciate the Second Amendment as something more than a sordid invention that the NRA telepathically transported back in time into the brain of James Madison when he was writing the Bill of Rights?

Makes sense for anyone in California, with the prospect of Governor Moonbeam returning to work with all the lefty loons in the Dem legislature. He can pick up where he left off decades ago and make California even more impossible as a place to do business. Just the team to solve California's problems. If that had been Krugman's topic, it might make sense. Too bad that Krugman had something else in mind.

My wife is In DC for a conference this weekend. I'm not sure if she's going to have the time, but I asked her to try to get to the Mall and take a few pics. I can't wait to see the crowd of losers and malcontents with all their stupid signs and costumes making a huge mess and screaming incoherently at every punchline. Liberals in large groups always beclown themselves, they just can't help it.

"GRAPE [vitamin-C enriched Kool-Aid]! I'm gonna get grape, or cherry. They're both... favorites, so either one is good, but if they have both, I'll get grape, because grape is a little more favorite. But if they don't have grape it's like alright its fine, cause cherry's favorite anyway. It's like another favorite, but not as much. Not as much favorite. But they're both good. They're both good."

but then again what do the republicans care as long as they can blame someone else.

Said HD with incredible cognitive dissonance if one bears in mind all the of blaming your erstwhile party has been doing this past couple of years. Tacitly claiming the Democrats have some sort of whining high-ground is damned near the funniest thing you've ever wrote here, HD.

John Richardson said... "..Krugman will now begin to appreciate the Second Amendment as something more than a sordid invention that the NRA telepathically transported back in time into the brain of James Madison when he was writing the Bill of Rights?"

" HDHouse said... As to Ann's comments, it would be an interesting observation if she handn't done that silly ..."I thought it was the Republicans....".

With that note, she equates Krugman with the knuckledragging brownshirts like Glenn Beck."

So to recap comparing commentators with different levels of seriousness is so completely inappropriate it outweighs all else, but comparing a political commentator to supporters of a mass mudering racist is ok.

Last week it was unconscionable to reenact Nazis because the group minimized the SS's actions. But we've always known HD's definition of right and wrong is 100% dependent on whether the accused agrees with his political opinions. It's revealing he believes he's closer to Hitler than Beck though.

I thought Beck was just a racist. I'll look into the mass murdering thing after lunch.

Speaking of racism, did you hear Obama exhorting Latinos to punish his enemies? I know he's a hateful prick, but siccing an entire race of people on his political opponents is a new low. Thank God he's only got two more (hopefully impotent) years left before we can start the process of forgetting that the bozo ever sullied the Oval Office.

I don't think anyone wants to read the left media any longer. I don't even open the New York Times. I don't turn on NPR. I saw a hilarious piece on Public Tv last night about how wonderful Portland, Oregon's urban planning is, but it was nonsense. Portland is a nightmare especially if you go to the perimeter. I can't even explain what's happened there: Beaverton Oregon which is ten miles to the west of Portland went from 6000 to 200,000 residents in 20 years because people wanted the proximity to beautifully planned Portland. So you get a crazy chaos of three lines going to one and back again all over Beaverton and the traffic flow is not.

They paved all the meadows for parking lots and so the few remaining creeks flood even when there's a trickle of rain.

Portland is nice, but all around it are planning nightmares. They left those out of the documentary.

It's PBS. Public b-shit.

Leftists want to turn this country into North Korea.

Thank goodness for the Tea Party.

The left is like Popeye's friend Wimpy -- I'll pay you Thursday for a hamburger today!

Constantly borrowing from the future while staggering the load onto an increasingly smaller indusrial base, and on the backs of the few remaining entrepreneurs while they plan away in their merry little cubicles of communist daydreams.

(The Crypto Jew) I thought Beck was just a racist. I'll look into the mass murdering thing after lunch.

Did you hear about the plan to push the Black Guy out for a Rich White Guy, oh yeah that doesn’t count because that was the Democrats doing that. That would be throwing Kendrick Meek under the bus for Charlie Crist, but since it’s “Bubba”-wonder if he had Kendrick fetch him some coffee before that sat down-and it’s the right party, no one should care I guess.

Speaking of racism, did you hear Obama exhorting Latinos to punish his enemies?

Frankly to me this is jaw dropping coming from the President of the United States. I mean not the singling out the support of a specific demographic but that I, as an American citizen and voter who disagrees with the Administrations policies is now viewed as the enemy.

TRO said "No one will listen to a liberal talk for that long and you know it."

You hit the nail on the head. Liberal talk radio and Liberal TV doesn't work very well because there isn't enough dissatisfaction to play off of. And that is the case not only in America, but in large parts of the world.

Part of the reason for that is: Some of the most significant SOCIAL changes in the past 100 years have been victories for the concept of liberalism and progressivism - including the civil rights act in the US, banning of Apartheid in South Africa, banning of clitoral mutilation in some african nations (not yet all, unfortunately), A stronger environmental consciousness all over the world, increased gay rights - etc etc.

The world is (despite the longing of some people for the good old days), a much more peaceful place, with a lot of equitable opportunities for different types of people than it used to be a 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. In most ways, I think, the world is a MUCH better place now that it used to be. Freedom of expression is at an all time high, thanks to the internet.

In a situation like that, it is hard for talk radio to survive - one of the fuels needed for talk radio is anger or dissatisfaction. Anger might be too strong of a word...dissatisfaction is enough.

As a social liberal, I am pretty darned pleased at the direction the world has taken in my lifetime. Yes, there still remains a lot of progress to be made. Women are still oppressed all over the middle east, and even in India (where I am from). Gay people are still stoned in many parts of the world. Species are still going extinct despite there being well established ways of development which wouldn't result in widespread species annihilation (migration corridors, higher density residential planning, etc).

Still, things are getting better and better. Speaking for me - when I look back at my 34 years of life and see how MUCH better India (my country of origin) and America (my country of adoption) and the whole darned world has gotten - I have a really hard time getting mad.

And Americans should be proud, because, despite some significant exceptions, your country has been one of the biggest engines of that betterment, of that progress.

(Yes, yes, I know the whole world likes to criticize america - but lets face it. That is the price you pay for being the 'pole' in a unipolar world)

You ignored Krugman's core points: 1) Republicans will spend the net two years trying to drive Obama from office -- not trying to address the nation's problems.

2) Republicans have vowed not to cooperate or compromise - they want everything their way.

3) Our economy is in a fragile state and not likely to weather this mischief well.

Republicans want to reinstate the same damn policies that wrecked the economy to begin with. They don't give a rat's ass about the nation's problems, only in stomping on the heads of anyone who opposes them.

@Ankur: As I understand it, Nehru adapted the policies of the Fabian socialists and thus condemned several generations of Indians to poverty. The great leap forward in India came when they adapted free market principles.....Historians usually write about the successes of progressivism and ignore their failures.

Krugman writes like an economist. A declarative sentence is foreign to him. He is not interesting to read......On television, he looks shifty and uneasy--like a registered sex offender at the cheerleader tryouts.

William, you are exactly right. However: Context - India, in 1947, was just gaining independence from one of the biggest capitalistic machines the world has ever seen - mercantilist colonial britain. And this form of capitalism brooked no resistance. So yes, Nehru's (and at that time, the rest of India's) inclination was towards socialism which helped curb the chaos in the beginning, but soon became an unbearable weight.

You will be interested to know that the political party that Nehru was part of was the same political party that kick-started India's economic resurgance in the 90s. The finance minister at the time, who basically turned the ship around, was called Manmohan Singh, who incidentally, is the prime minister now.

This is also the political party that is the "liberal" or "Left" wing in Indian politics.

I think, the point is - good economic policy needs to be context dependent, not ideology dependent. Nehru's socialism was a good thing for the first five years when it was needed to bring the country together. It should have been dispensed with in 1962, after the border war with China - but it stuck around for 30 more years. In economics, as in many aspects of policy, it is harder to pick the right transition timing than it is to pick a side.

"Blazing Saddles" reference. You should be able to find the clip on youtube with that phrase.

On a quick pass, I couldn't find it. Basically it means agreeing with someone without adding anything of substance in support. In the clip, the guy just stands up, says that Howard Johnson (they are all named Johnson) is right and sits back down.

Republicans will spend the net two years trying to drive Obama from office -- not trying to address the nation's problems.

Obama and his policies ARE the nation's problems. Instead of treating just the symptoms and slapping another bandaid over the festering pustle of progressive socialistic liberalism, we need to lance the boil, cure the disease, eradicate the cancer and possibly even amputate a bit.

Ha ha. I have a bunch of those. I took some of them out of the casing and made a wall art/collage with them and many obsolete chips and barious pieces op mother boards and video board sets. Very fun to look at.

1) Republicans will spend the net two years trying to drive Obama from office -- not trying to address the nation's problems.

Well, aside from the fact that I think this actually is a contradictory statement-- why should we consider this to be any different from any other midterm election?

What's new?Can we surmise that this is why the economy crashed the last two years of the Bush administration?The Democratic Congress was too busy trying to drive Bush from office to focus on the problems they now claim *he* should have seen coming?

Krugman could never succeed as a fear merchant. I have never seen someone whose natural expression was so hunted as his.

HDHouse said...

With that note, she equates Krugman with the knuckledragging brownshirts like Glenn Beck.

No, all his people wear red, white, and blue. You know, those colors that make Lefties feel all creepy.

but then again what do the republicans care as long as they can blame someone else.

No, that's The Zero's thing.

AlphaLiberal said...

As a response to a thoughtful comment, that was dumb and vapid.

You ignored Krugman's core points: 1) Republicans will spend the net two years trying to drive Obama from office --

And this is bad, how?

Republicans are just crazy. They want to keep repeating failed policies.

Though, in their defense, their policies have enriched the upper 2% quite handsomely

That's why all the big banks have been giving to the Demos for 20 years.

Scott M said...

"Blazing Saddles" reference. You should be able to find the clip on youtube with that phrase.

On a quick pass, I couldn't find it. Basically it means agreeing with someone without adding anything of substance in support. In the clip, the guy just stands up, says that Howard Johnson (they are all named Johnson) is right and sits back down.

And the next one says, "Dr Samuel Johnson is right!", and the next one, "Van Johnson is right!", and the next, "Olsen Johnson is right!"...

Is it really hard to cut spending in an organization with as much waste as the Federal government ...really? It's rife with it, and everyone knows it.

Even liberals should be looking for ways to cut wasted spending, so they can accomplish more of their goals per dollar of tax revenue. But they act like it's impossible, immoral and strictly good for conservatives.

Many current government functions could be performed more efficiently by the private sector.

My impression is that government contractors cost more than government employees doing the same job. And when it comes to military contracting, they often had been doing the same job, at a lot lower price.

Many current government functions could be performed more efficiently by the private sector

You can cancel or not renew a private contractor if he doesn't perform or the job is done, and he can fire his employees if they sit on their asses all day. The invisible hand will push him do things as efficiently as government regs allow.

I hope the new Congress pisses off a lot of people. There are a lot who need to be told "NO" and they, of course, will not like it.

We need to be saying yes to the productive and no to the nonproductive. Then people might get the idea that being productive is preferable, and find out that they are quite capable of being so. We have so many who have never even tried, generations now. It's immoral to rob people of their challenges. To paraphrase one of my favorite movie lines: "When you coddle a man, you take everything he has and everything he ever will have."

I wouldn't mind starting an all-classical radio station in my market, playing 24/7. I would be competing, however, with an NPR affiliate which plays a few hours of classical a day to suck in its target audience for donations. I wouldn't stand a chance against that despite the fact that their programming is uninspired. If they were left to their own they would fail and I could do a private deal that would be of very high quality with no yak yak about politics or building water wells in Mali. Just classical music interrupted occasionally by highly profitable commercials.

I wouldn't mind starting an all-classical radio station in my market, playing 24/7.

Quickest way to go broke I know of, although all-jazz stations run it a close second. Thirty years ago, Chicago had three high quality classical stations. One became country, another classic rock. The survivor is a listener-supported non-profit.

You can cancel or not renew a private contractor if he doesn't perform or the job is done

In theory.

In practice we're still shoveling money at DynCorp, Blackwater/Xe, and Halliburton, completely ignoring their track records.

But again, this is a problem with governments, and, in particular, the fascist sort of socialism practiced primarily by the statists on the left right now (though the Republicans, esp. under Bush weren't exempt from this).

The problem is crony capitalism. This is what made the trains run on time for a couple years in Italy, and provided the Third Reich with decent armaments. And, indeed, the communist type of socialism also works decently for short periods of time when you are trying to produce millions of guns and tens of thousands of tanks.

But, ultimately, what goes wrong is that the government leaders gets too tight with the companies doing its bidding, and the graft, corruption, and inefficiency end up grossly overcoming any benefits you might have had.

So, I will admit that sometimes government employees can do a more efficient job than government contractors, and sometimes a less efficient job.

But, that is not really the issue. Rather, the issue should be whether that function should have been taken over by the government in the first place. And, almost invariably, when you compare a function done by the government in one town, either directly or through contractors, and done privately in the next, the private solution is almost always significantly more efficient and ultimately cheaper.

Government employees are inefficient because they don't have a bottom line, except for their own self-benefit. And government contractors are inefficient because they have to deal with government regulations (such as Davis Bacon, as just one), and, because government contracting invariably results in rent seeking and crony capitalism, where the successful government contractors spend their money on buying influence in order to sell the government inferior goods and services at inflated prices.

Thomas Sowell on 'Trickle Down' Theory: "[...]no recognized economist of any school of thought has sever had any such theory.... It is a straw man. It cannot be found in even the most voluminous and learned histories of economic theories." (Basic Economics: page 388).

"In 2008, we lost an average of 317,250 private sector jobs per month. In 2010, we have gained an average of 95,888 private sector jobs per month."

In 2008 we reaped the bitter fruit of failed Republican policies.

In 2010 we are still recovering from those failed Republican policies.

Plain silly, if you ask me.

But the what AL is intentionally ignoring here is which party controlled Congress in 2008? After all, all the President can really do is sign or veto bills and appoint the political levels at the various government departments and agencies. New laws come out of Congress, as well as, notably, all spending bills.

The other thing that AL is intentionally ignoring is what was going on in 2008. The failed policies that triggered the recession weren't those of the Republicans, but those of the Democrats, notably Frank and Dodd, who were using everything at their disposal to force lenders to lend to people who couldn't afford the payments for the houses they were buying. And, at least Dodd, was in the pockets of the banks that were doing the lending, and then, the two of them made sure that the regulatory bill this year for financial institutions didn't apply to the companies that caused the problem in the first place.

Finally, recessions are normal. The problem with this one is its depth and breadth, and the Democrats had complete control over the two elected branches of government during the time that the economy should have been recovering much more quickly, by historical standards. Why didn't it? Well, one of the prime culprits is probably former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who keeps to this day pushing the same failed economic policies that deepened and greatly lengthened the Great Depression.

Krugman is hardly alone in this assessment. The MJS in its endorsement of Feingold over Johnson had this to say: In Johnson, we do not see sufficient depth in his professional experience or his stated positions. In him, we fear, the nation will get one more senator who will disdain bipartisanship and compromise at a time when a deeply divided government needs both

There aren't many competitors left for large or specialized defense contracts, and security can make entering the market expensive and difficult.

My employer sells to 8 or 10 state and local govt agencies. Some are quite a pain to work with and get money out of, some aren't. NC State Univ. drives 60 miles to us, partly because they annoyed the local suppliers by taking months to pay their bills.

Liberals turn every disagreement into race. If Patrick Duval loses in Massachusetts, they will blame it on the racist electorate. If Obama loses his house majority, that will be due to racist white voters too, especially those Pennsylvania blue collar workers who cling to their religion and guns.

I'm getting pretty tired of people who blame every political disagreement on racism, sexism, ageism, homeophobia, lookism, boobism, dickism, twatism and general fucked-up-ism. Sometimes a cigar really is a cigar.

Krugman always has this hunted look lately. Probably because all his pet theories were actually put in place by Obama and they are failing dismally. He's being revealed as the idiot he has always been.

Reagan left office 22 years ago, the feds kept spending and spending social security taxes and according to FLS, it's all Reagan's fault! I suggest you take your partisan blinders off.

Conservative, heal thyself. Reagan gave us one set of income tax cuts and Bush jr. gave us another set. What's the result? Since 1980 everytime there's been a GOP President, the National Debt has grown. But out of 8 Clinton budgets, four ended the year in surplus (Constant 2005 dollars).